Around the world with the Phillips family

Atlantic Canada Trip: Day Four

Well, we got up at 5 again this morning. I guess that’s a bit of a theme for the trip. I can’t imagine a day that we might get up later. I guess I will eventually get used to operating on a little less sleep than usual. It was a quieter day than yesterday, but we did more interesting stuff than we did on Day 2, which is all that matters.

Mom came with Mark, Ripley, and I on our run this morning to run in a little park in Buffalo that we’ve run in before: Audubon Town Park. It’s a pretty nice place, and the sun was up before we were even there by just after 5:30, so sunrise definitely seems to be coming earlier as we head east, which makes sense.

Kodak Tower

Back at the hotel, everyone showered and had their La Quinta breakfast. We were on the road just after 8am, though we did have to stop at a gas station for ice. We are far enough north now that it is getting hard to find iced tea, but Dunkin’ Donuts has it, so we had to stop there too, since our gas station didn’t have it.

We were still in New York for a large portion of the day. Dad drove first, since everyone prefers for Mark to handle the border crossings, and Mark drove last yesterday. We left Buffalo and drove over to Rochester, where we drove into town to look around and take some photos. Mark also really wanted a picture of the Kodak building, so we swung by there to grab a few photos.

Burnap’s Farm Market

In Rochester, we turned off of the main road and drove along smaller roads nearer to Lake Ontario. It was also nice to get off of the toll road. New York is ridiculously full of toll roads, and it makes me really unhappy. Along the way today, we saw quite a few fruit tees. A large portion of them were apple and cherry trees. The cherries are very ripe this time of year, and the bright red cherries on the little green trees are adorable.

We made several stops in the little town of Sodus, in particular. We first came across a farm market with a little cafe. You could even go out and pick your own cherries if you wanted. The place was full of fresh baked goods, fresh fruits and vegetables grown on site, and homemade jams and jellies. It was amazing. We spent a lot of time looking around.

Such pretty fruit

In the end, Mark and Dad both got some pie, Dad got some cookies, and Mark got a Donut. I had fresh iced tea and Mom and I split some cherries. Mom also bought a loaf of french bread and a small jar of jam, but we haven’t broken into it yet. If this hotel doesn’t have breakfast, we might have it in the morning after we run tomorrow.

Ripley also had a good time, even though she didn’t get any snacks. Mark took her through a little corn maze, and walked her around the gardens and the orchard area. We had to take turns going into the shop, since dogs weren’t really allowed, so by the time he brought her back to me, she was hot, so I stood with her while she rested on the shady grass. She definitely did some rolling around. Soft grass is her favorite thing.

Lighthouse at Sodus Point

Also in Sodus, only a little further down the road, we drove down to a little beach area and a lighthouse. We’re going to be seeing a lot of lighthouses on this trip, so I hope everyone likes them. This one wasn’t as cool as yesterday’s, but we’ve seen some that are way cooler on other trips, and I hope we do on this trip too.

From Sodus, we took 104 over to Fulton, where we bought some lunch at a Chinese restaurant. I was so proud of my parents for eating at a Chinese restaurant. They are pretty resistant to trying things like that. Granted, they mostly had egg rolls and meat on a stick, but I was still proud. Mark and I had steamed veggies and rice. They gave us brown garlic sauce for it, but it was way too sweet, so we did without. Mmm… veggies. They are hard to come by on trips like this.

Everyone had Chinese food for lunch

From Fulton we drove to Mexico, which is a hilariously named town in New York. We had a lot of fun telling each other that we were about to be in Mexico. We then drove back over to the highway, since we were pulling away from the lake and we were running a little later than we wanted.

Ripley selfie

About 30 miles from the Canadian border, we switched drivers, since Dad was getting tired. We crossed in Collins Landing, which was a much smaller border crossing that the two we did yesterday. The ones around Niagara Falls are serious business. This one took half as long at most.

It’s weird to turn your phone off when you cross the border, and our phones will now be off until we come back into the States around July 25th. Mark has cached maps and such, so we shouldn’t get lost or anything, but it is still strange to suddenly feel so disconnected. Worried its going to rain? Wondering about traffic? Too bad.

Thousand Islands National Park

This crossing is in the Thousand Islands area, and on the Canadian side, there’s a national park, aptly named Thousand Islands National Park. Basically, in this area, the St. Lawrence River, which runs between the U.S. and Canada, is filled with tiny, rocky islands.

As you can see from the photo above, many of the tiny islands have houses on them. It is absolutely wild. Even the very tiniest islands sometimes have houses on them. On the larger islands, you sometimes see mansions that take up the whole island. It’s really gorgeous looking down on the islands from the bridge where we crossed into Canada, and the houses are very cool.

People kite surfing in the Thousand Islands area

We stopped by the park’s visitor center, which was about to close at 4pm, so we just quickly looked around used the restrooms. Out back of the visitor center, a couple of people were kite surfing. I haven’t mentioned the weather today, but the temperature has been as high as 95 degrees, and it’s been very windy most of the day. It was perfect for the kite surfers.

From there we drove on to Montreal. We finally made it into our hotel room just after 7pm, and once everything was unpacked, we spent a few minutes googling around to see what we wanted for dinner. In the end, Mark and I drove over and picked up hamburgers and veggie burgers from Harvey’s. Mark got to have some poutine, as well. He loves the idea of it more than he loved the taste, I think. Maybe he will get the chance to have some that’s even better later in the trip. I know he’s hoping for it.

Veggie burger

Tomorrow we are driving up to Baie-Comeau, which is right before the Labrador Highway. Tomorrow is the last day we will be in civilization for a while, so I expect we will stop at a grocery store sometime during the day. I’m not sure what the breakfast situation is here in the hotel, so we may have to go buy something. Maybe we will have Tim Horton’s or that one Dunkin’ Donuts we saw. Maybe we will have some of the bread and jam Mom bought. I just don’t know. We do get to run though, which I always enjoy. Ripley, too.